Warsaw students taking their secondary school leaving exams have been given souvenirs from the city authorities.

These are ball-point pens with a Chopin Year logo, a reminder of the composer’s links with Warsaw, a city where he spent the first twenty years of his life.

This is yet another Chopin Year promotion scheme sponsored by the Warsaw Town Council. Every baby born in Warsaw this year receives body baby clothing with an inscription; ‘A Varsovian by birth, a Pole at heart and by his talent a citizen of the world’.

This is what the famous poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid wrote about Chopin in his obituary of the composer.

2010 marks the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth. (mk)